Cooking Casebook: Muffin tin frittatas

I love eggs. I love how versatile they are. You can eat them silky smooth and steamed, you can fry them into omelettes with lots of stuff mixed in. Or you can have them simple: half-boiled and runny with a dash of soya sauce (my mum used dark soya sauce, while the hubby insists light is the only way to go), or sunny-side up with a nice gooey center.

Eggs were a staple for Junior J when he was a toddler, since he was extremely fussy and hated to chew, so feeding him any type of meat was a challenge. We would even buy eggs when we travelled with him, since we could easily cook them in a hotel room (all you needed was a cup and hot water!), and bring them along with us on the go.

However, eggs more or less disappeared from our diet about two years back, when Lil J came along. We discovered the boy had an egg allergy, and cooking eggs in a meal meant that I would have to prepare an extra dish for Lil J (and on an ordinary day, I didn't have that kind of time!) I was also worried about contamination during food preparation and during the meal itself, since the boy was a foodie and would sometimes filch food from our plates. And it was rather sad to see this little boy asking for "the yellow thing" on our plates, only to be told he couldn't have it because it had egg in it. (Birthday parties are also another time when the little boy gets a wee bit disappointed, since he usually doesn't get to eat the birthday cake, and most other baked goodies, plus he doesn't get to eat most of the stuff in his goodie bag, like marshmallows and various biscuits.) So I more or less stopped cooking stuff with egg in it for quite a long time. 

These days however, I've discovered all these freezer friendly meals, and wanted to explore making meals with egg in them that I could prepare at night and freeze. These I could just heat up in the toaster (we gave away our microwave some time ago!) while I prepared something else for Lil J. I recently found this recipe for muffin tin frittatas, and tried it out, and Junior J loves them, so I've been making batches and freezing them for him. These are great for breakfast, as well as for lunchboxes (they look especially lovely sitting in a colourful muffin cup), so I'm sharing our recipe here. 

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Muffin Tin Frittatas

Modified from this recipe, as I didn't have mascarpone cheese, or prosciutto.
Makes 12 mini frittatas.

Ingredients:

6 large eggs, or 8-9 regular-sized ones

2 slices of ham, cut into small pieces

1 medium sized tomato, cut into small cubes

A large handful of baby spinach, chopped

1/3 cup grated/shredded cheese (I use mozzarella and parmesan)

1 tablespoon parsley, chopped

Pepper

Olive oil or butter

Steps:

1. Heat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Lightly grease 12 muffin cups with olive oil or butter and set aside.

2.  Add eggs and some pepper to a bowl. Whisk the eggs, then mix in cheese, ham, tomato, baby spinach and parsley. 

3. Spoon in egg mixture into the muffin tin, filling each about 2/3 or 3/4 full (you can also fill each almost to the top if you want larger servings for adults). 

4. Bake for 20-22 minutes, until the tops are puffed and golden-brown.

You can serve them immediately, or cool them and store them in the fridge or freezer. It should keep for a few days in the fridge. We heat these for about 4-5 minutes at almost maximum heat in the toaster after they have defrosted for about 20 minutes or so. Most of these recipes call for you to add salt to the egg, however, I've omitted it as I find its already pretty salty with the ham and the parmesan. If you'd like it to be less salty, use more mozzarella instead of other cheeses as it has a lower salt content. Also, you can try adding other stuff to the mix, like onions, capsicum, or potatoes!

PS: I hardly post recipes on the blog these days, since I'm not a good cook. However, we've been on a mission to make better breakfasts these days, so I hope to be back to share what we've been making and eating! 

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